Heather says:
I’m starting a new series here on Home-Ec 101.
We all have our bad days, airhead moments, or times when we say to heck with the rules and do it our own way.  It’s time to share your household flubs and secrets. Feel free to remain anonymous, but keep it family friendly.
I’m a SaHM with a toddler and a brand new baby. I don’t know if this stuff comes easy to some but I find myself really overwhelmed some days. But that’s not the confession… There’s a twenty in the drawer for the really bad days. When I’m so overrun and exhausted, once in a great while I’ll order Chinese delivered, lock us upstairs with the baby gate and have a picnic with movies. Yeah, I know it’s MSG and TV for kids but it really turns a rough day right around. We get QT together snuggling and laughing without messing the house, dirtying a dish and running mommy all over the house ringing a rosie. And she’ll even eat all of her veggies. Does it matter that they’re fried? lol
Don’t worry, my hubby will not use pennies. No matter if the total is $2.01, he’ll give you two ones and a nickel. At night he’d put the pennies on his dresser and the next morning, he’d leave them. I would put them in a jar. At the end of each month, we’d go to McDonald’s and spend dad’s pennies. The kids were 16 months apart, so I sympathize. Now they are 16 and 17 and I use the pennies for extra gas money. 🙂
I say there are some days when they are little that you just do what it takes to stay sane. And Chinese food is the way to go, girl!
My favorite free time activity when they were that old was to fill up the Jacuzzi with lukewarm water, a little bit of shampoo and two kids in swimsuits. Let them play while you read a good book. When the water gets cold, add a little more warm. When you are done, shampoo the heads, dry them off, put them down for a nap, and you don’t have to do night time baths! Mop the floor to get up the splashes, and voila the bathroom gets a good shining too.
And try and enjoy it. Soon they’ll be driving and you’ll only see them when the gas pennies run low.
Now for my blunder. We had a leak that messed up the bathroom popcorn ceiling. Being cheap, and a DIYer. I decided to fix it by buying the spray on ceiling in a can. I shook it up real good, and sprayed away. Well let me tell you, the only thing in that bathroom without popcorn on it was…. the ceiling. Took me two hours to clean up the mess and the ceiling looked worse afterward. If your popcorn ceiling gets messed up, this is a job for the professionals, or scrap it all off and make the ceiling onionskinned. And then paint.
I’m afraid I have more flubs than secrets. Like the time I made orange ginger salmon for dinner, even though my husband dislikes both ginger and salmon. Or the time I set off the smoke alarm cooking bacon. Or all the other times I set off the smoke alarm.
Ah, well. =)
Kate
Which Proverbs 14:1 Woman:
http://www.proverbs14-1.blogspot.com
One of my many flubs was the time I made my youngest daughters birthday dinner. Her favorite meal, roast, potatoes, peas, gravy and hot rolls. I had baked something in the oven before putting the roast in and had turned the oven off. I later put the roast into the oven and went about preparing everything else. When it came time to take the roast out of the oven I had realized that I hadn’t turned the oven on! Everything else was ready and my family was ready to eat and I had no meat to go with my daughters birthday meal that she requested. My quick thinking saved the day though. I had a ham in the fridge that we ate. My family still gets a good laugh about it.
Airhead moment. I was getting ready to go out, dressed up even, and while racing to get out the door, grabbed for the hairspray; however, it was actually a can of scrubbing bubbles. Luckily it only took a second to realize the goof, so it was only a small amount, but it was a very embarrasing moment. Glad I didn’t have any cans of spray paint nearby.
Put some potatoes in the microwave for dinner. Set Timer. Went upstairs to take a shower, and a shave. Didn’t rush.
Next thing smoke alarm goes off. Go downstairs to burning smell. Potatoes are on fire in the microwave.
I must have set it for 50 minutes in instead of five. I’d been upstairs about 20 when the alarm went off.
The potatoes were cheaply replaceable; alas the fairly new $120 microwave wasn’t.
My mind was apparently elsewhere one day while making guacamole. I thought I grabbed the chili powder but had grabbed cinnamon instead. Into the trash it went. I no longer use chili powder in my guac.
Another time I got sick for several days & kept worrying about the lot of fresh produce I had just purchased in the fridge so the first chance I felt a wee bit better I went into the kitchen to make myself some stirfry for supper and almost burned down the place preheating the oil in the wok due to heavy brain fog from the cold meds. Along with the “no driving” warning on cold meds they should add “no wokking” too.
Should I mention the time I accidentally dropped a ham bone in the toilet, (I was draining the pan..into the toilet!) panicked and flushed? The landlord needed to take up the entire toilet to get it out. Very embarassing!
It was a Wednesday night and i made my sweetie fresh Caesar salads with grilled chicken. Dinner went over great. The next day I noticed an odd smell in my apartment. The sweetie is a garbage man so i quickly washed all his work clothes thinking that was the problem. Nope, smell got worse. I had just purchased a stand up deep freeze from craiglist so we turned that off thinking that the freezer was causing the smell, nope. The smell was similar to that of a decaying animal. We pulled out the fridge, the stove, took the trash out. Cleaned out the plumbing lines. And still couldn’t find odor. It is now Sunday and the smell is horrible. As much as it pained me to want to find the source of the smell I kept failing. Late that evening the bedroom light bulb burnt out. I went grab a light bulb from under the kitchen sink and OMG – I found the source of the smell. I put a 10 pound bag of boneless frozen chicken breasts (less the two breasts for Caesar salads) under the kitchen sink with the cleaning supplies. I dont know what i was thinking but let me tell you, chicken that has been sitting in an 80 degree apartment for 4 days smells HORRIBLE!
I feel so much better about my own flubs now.
I ruined a cake – trying to impress a boyfriends parents – by not knowing / remembering in Colorado, you adjust for altitude. Said cake broke the cake plate and cracked the kitchen garbage can.
My first Thanksgiving- I tried one of those Reynolds Oven bags – and melted it right to the turkey. Ick.
Mine would have to be a real air head moment that ended up costing me a chunk of change. On mass kitchen cleaning mission, I decided to not only clean out the refrig but scrub down the shelves and drawers. I filled the sink with hot water and cleanser….and grabbed a shelf….in the hot water it went. Crrraaaccck! Cold glass shelves and hot water….not a friendly mix. Now I know the reason they print cleaning instructions in the owner manuals along with the address for ordering new parts. Its for air heads like MOI.
Oh my! The two most recent flubs I can think of right now involve baking and my fiance.
#1. Decided to make chocolate chip devil’s food cupcakes. Put them in the oven to bake, set the timer, and then forgot about them. The timer is supposed to go off, right? Weeeellll, for some reason I didn’t hear the timer and returned much more than 20 minutes later to find very hard cupcakes!
#2. Gone out of town, and not easily reached by cell phone. Called fiance and realized while talking to him that it was his birthday. I had been under a lot of stress and having some bad back pains for the whole week prior to this. Trying to be–something–I said, “don’t you have a birthday today?” in a very playful voice. His response, “actually it was yesterday!” Doh! He was gracious enough to say thank you. 🙂